Only three weeks have passed since the end of the tea party-inspired government shutdown, yet already the group's citizen activists find themselves in the eye of another political storm. Republican-oriented business groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Retail Federation are now threatening to challenge tea party-favored primary candidates, especially if they appear to be in the Ted Cruz scorched-earth political mold.

These business interests and a growing number of GOP insiders are fed up with tea party tactics that they believe have become a negative political force for a Republican Party that is now suffering record-low approval ratings. One business leader recently compared its influence to the Occupy Wall Street crowd taking control of the Democratic Party.

The tea party's answer to the GOP establishment threats: Bring it on—we aren't backing down. That's the message I gleaned from recent interviews with three of the movement's most prominent leaders: Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks, Amy Kremer of Tea Party Express and Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots.

After 20 years working behind the scenes in Washington, Mr. Kibbe is well-seasoned in political warfare. Ms. Martin, a former computer programmer and Home Depot manager, and Ms. Kremer, a former Delta flight attendant, are relatively new to such conflict. The two women are both mothers living in Georgia—one of the states where the tea party first took root four years ago—and they reflect the group's typical profile: white, middle class, well educated, sick of politics as usual and driven by a conviction that America must be rescued from impending ruin caused by Washington's profligacy.

These three don't always agree on tactics, and they often compete for money and media attention. But they share an overall assessment of what is wrong with Washington and what needs to be done. Like many local tea party activists I have spoken with, they generally view the government shutdown not as a tactical blunder but as an example of weak-kneed Republicans muffing an opportunity to roll back ObamaCare.

"I don't have any regrets," says Ms. Kremer, who attended the original meeting in August when Sen. Mike Lee of Utah unveiled the plan to defund ObamaCare. Mr. Kibbe is similarly unrepentant. Asked what went wrong, he replies: "We just didn't anticipate the Republican circular firing squad in the Senate or the vicious attacks directed at Mike Lee and Ted Cruz." He still thinks the GOP could have won.

Ms. Martin expresses sheer frustration with the final outcome: "What would you expect? This was the ruling elite"—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid —"negotiating with the ruling elite"—Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Neither she nor Mr. Kibbe nor Ms. Martin acknowledges even the possibility that the government shutdown was a doomed strategy from the start. The tea party's public-approval rating in the immediate aftermath of the government shutdown has plummeted to 14% in some polls, but these leaders seem unfazed.

Were their members demoralized by the GOP cave-in? No, Mr. Kibbe says, they're "energized." He says FreedomWorks' fundraising has soared in recent weeks, and he expects that the group will raise up to $20 million this year. Other tea party organizations report similar surges in contributions.

Ms. Martin says her troops are also fired up. "I have never seen our members so angry at the elected Republicans—especially Sens. McConnell and [John] McCain. " There is more than a hint in these interviews that tea party groups will redouble their efforts to unseat Republicans who they think waved a white flag during the shutdown. "Taking on incumbent Republicans is part of our job," Ms. Martin says.

Critics say the tea party seems to think that the other part of its job is replacing incumbents with candidates who are hapless neophytes—not-ready-for-primetime candidates like Sharron Angle in Nevada, Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. Republicans blame their defeats for preventing a GOP takeover of the Senate in 2010 and 2012. Don't tell that to the tea party. Its members are adamant that they aren't an appendage of the Republican Party. "How do these critics think Republicans won their landslide election in 2010?" Mr. Kibbe says. "It was because of us."

He believes it is a "false choice to say that Republicans can't win a governing majority by picking principled free-market candidates." And he shows me an election spread sheet purporting to show that in 2012, tea party candidates fared better than those handpicked by the Republican establishment. "Almost all our tea party candidates won in 2010," he says, while the big losers in 2012 were uninspiring moderate Republicans in states like North Dakota, Montana and New Mexico.

But Mr. Kibbe does admit: "OK, Indiana and Richard Mourdock"—who defeated longtime GOP incumbent Richard Lugar and then lost in the general election—"you can blame on us."

Ms. Kremer says, "It doesn't do us any good to have more Republicans if they don't stand for our principles. Our goal isn't to just elect more, but better Republicans."

She points to the election to the Senate in recent years of Rand Paul, Pat Toomey, Ron Johnson, Marco Rubio and Mike Lee, all of whom were aided by tea party backing. She adds that when George W. Bush was president and Republicans controlled Congress, Washington's big-spending ways never changed. Just electing politicians with an "R" next to their name, she says, won't bring the kind of seismic change that's needed.

But it wasn't until the Obama administration took over, with an unprecedented spending spree—including the $830 billion "stimulus" and plans for a fantastically expensive health-care overhaul—that millions of Americans were galvanized to take political action.

Many on the left and right hoped that the tea party movement would fizzle, but its influence, especially inside the GOP, seems to have increased. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz acknowledges that the defund ObamaCare and government-shutdown power play simply wouldn't have happened without the organizing efforts of activists across the country. Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots and FreedomWorks led this mobilization. They have combined annual budgets of more than $30 million and claim between six million and 12 million active members.

What's next on their agenda? Beyond still vowing to roll back ObamaCare—how, precisely, isn't clear— Ms. Kreme says "one of our immediate priorities is to enforce the budget caps and sequester." Even the defense cuts, which many military hawks think could endanger national defense? "With a $17 trillion debt," she says, "everything has to be cut."

Unlike Reagan-era conservatives, who supported rising budgets for the Pentagon to ensure military superiority in the Cold War, the tea party sees the federal debt itself as the main threat to national security.

Mr. Kibbe identifies balancing the budget as the paramount goal for his members. Are they so obsessed with eliminating deficits that they would accept tax increases to get there? No way: "There's a definite supply-side strain within the tea party," he says, smiling. "They want revenues, yes, but through growth and tax reform."

It's a mistake, though, to assume that the tea party is a single-issue movement. The focus on federal spending reflects a general distrust of almost everything that happens in Washington. A theme that emerges in talking with tea party leaders and activists is that under President Obama the federal government has increasingly intruded on basic constitutional rights. It's easy to discount this as black-helicopter paranoia, but Ms. Martin pointedly notes that Tea Party Patriots and allied groups were the subject of IRS targeting and audits.

One typical and unfair criticism of the tea party, as expressed once by Nancy Pelosi, is that this is an "astro-turf," manufactured movement, not a genuine localized grass roots uprising. Nonsense. All one has to do is attend a tea party rally to see that the activists are bus drivers, construction workers, home makers, small business owners and grandparents who have a patriotic concern about the consequences of trillion-dollar deficits and bailout nation. As one activist told me, "All we want from our government is less of it."

Now that the activists are facing friendly fire from mainstream Republicans, the temptation to start a third party might seem tempting, but Mr. Kibbe quickly dismisses the idea. "Third parties are a political disaster," he says, citing the Bull Moose Party a century ago, which split the GOP and helped put the liberal Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the White House. More recently, Ross Perot took votes from George H.W. Bush and helped to elect Bill Clinton.

Mr. Kibbe says the tea party's goal is to "move the center of gravity of the Republican party toward an agenda of freedom and limited government." He cites as a model the modern-day progressive left's takeover of the Democratic Party, gaining enough liberal influence to make Nancy Pelosi the House Speaker and using a grass-roots strategy to nominate Barack Obama over the establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton.

The animus from the business wing of the GOP doesn't scare the tea party leaders. Ms. Martin scoffs: "We're not surprised big businesses are opposing us. These are mostly crony capitalists who want something from government."

Mr. Kibbe is similarly disdainful: "I used to work at the Chamber of Commerce. The chamber supported the original version of HillaryCare back in 1993 and the precursor to ObamaCare. They supported the bank bailouts and the Obama stimulus. We are not for any of that." As for the prospect of business backing candidates specifically to challenge tea party choices, Ms. Kremer says: "If it's business money versus tea party grass-roots activists, I like our chances."

This us-against-the-world mentality turns off many people regarding the tea party and may prevent it from gaining enough traction with a big tent of voters to realize its goals. Conservative pollster Whit Ayres says of the tea party, "I wish they would remember the Reagan rule, if someone is with me 70% of the time in politics, they are my friend."

Not the tea party. If you're 30% not with them, that can be a deal breaker. "I would hope the business groups would understand that money alone doesn't buy elections," Ms. Martin says. "The business groups need to work with the tea party, not against it."

If these three activists are any guide, and I think they are, then the GOP is headed for an internal brawl in 2014, and perhaps beyond. In the recent debt-ceiling wrangle, the tea party seems not to have realized where that fight would lead. Before letting the clash with establishment Republicans escalate into all-out war, the tea party should step back and consider an uncomfortable fact. In the end, only one person will win that war. Her name is Hillary Clinton.

Sowell: Tea Party at the CrossroadsBy Thomas Sowell November 12, 2013 6:55 am

Third parties have had an unbroken record of failure in American presidential politics. So it was refreshing to see in the Tea Party an insurgent movement, mainly of people who were not professional politicians, but who nevertheless had the good sense to see that their only chance of getting their ideals enacted into public policies was within one of the two major parties.

More important, the Tea Party was an insurgent movement that was not trying to impose some untried Utopia, but to restore the lost heritage of America that had been eroded, undermined or just plain sold out by professional politicians.

What the Tea Party was attempting was conservative, but it was also insurgent -- if not radical -- in the sense of opposing the root assumptions behind the dominant political trends of our times. Since those trends have included the erosion, if not the dismantling, of the Constitutional safeguards of American freedom, what the Tea Party was attempting was long overdue.

ObamaCare epitomized those trends, since its fundamental premise was that the federal government had the right to order individual Americans to buy what the government wanted them to buy, whether they wanted to or not, based on the assumption that Washington elites know what is good for us better than we know ourselves.

The Tea Party's principles were clear. But their tactics can only be judged by the consequences.

Since the Tea Party sees itself as the conservative wing of the Republican Party, its supporters might want to consider what was said by an iconic conservative figure of the past, Edmund Burke: "Preserving my principles unshaken, I reserve my activity for rational endeavours."

Fundamentally, "rational" means the ability to make a ratio -- that is, to weigh one thing against another. Burke makes a key distinction between believing in a principle and weighing the likely consequences of taking a particular action to advance that principle.

There is no question that the principles of anyone who believes in the freedom of American citizens from arbitrary government dictates like ObamaCare -- unauthorized by anything in the Constitution and forbidden by the 10th Amendment -- must oppose this quantum leap forward in the expansion of the power of government.

There is nothing ambiguous about the principle. The only question is about the tactics, the Tea Party's attempt to defund ObamaCare. The principle would justify repealing ObamaCare. So the only reason for the Tea Partyers' limiting themselves to trying to defund this year was a recognition that repealing it was not within their power.

The only question then is: was defunding ObamaCare within their power? Most people outside the Tea Party recognized that defunding ObamaCare was also beyond their power -- and events confirmed that.

It was virtually inconceivable from the outset that the Tea Party could force the Democrats who controlled the Senate to pass the defunding bill, even if the Tea Party had the complete support of all Republican Senators -- much less pass it with a majority large enough to override President Obama's certain veto.

Therefore was the Tea Party-led attempt to defund ObamaCare something that met Burke's standard of a "rational endeavour"?

With the chances of making a dent in ObamaCare by trying to defund it being virtually zero, and the Republican Party's chances of gaining power in either the 2014 or 2016 elections being reduced by the public's backlash against that futile attempt, there was virtually nothing to gain politically and much to lose.

However difficult it might be to repeal ObamaCare after it gets up and running, the odds against repeal, after the 2014 and 2016 elections, are certainly no worse than the odds against defunding it in 2013. Winning those elections would improve the odds.

If the Tea Party made a tactical mistake, that is not necessarily fatal in politics. People can even learn from their mistakes -- but only if they admit to themselves that they were mistaken. Whether the Tea Party can do that may determine not only its fate but the fate of an America that still needs the principles that brought Tea Party members together in the first place.

---

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Crafty posted the first part above in the thread, the link to part 2 follows my comment.

Words I have never before written, Thomas Sowell, I think you have this wrong. The concept is right. Choosing our battles, policies, tactics and candidates to support and oppose are all crucial to tea party success. The de-fund strategy was judged a failure. However, it did NOT cause the shutdown, the opponents did that by refusing to negotiate with the House - on ObamaCare. The rest was all funded by the House. The 'shutdown' was a 16 day, 17%, non-essential services, paid vacation. Other than giving ammunition to an already hateful mainstream media, almost no one can point to real damage done. On the plus side, it was made abundantly clear to everyone (again) that the Republicans oppose this train wreck and have at least a part of a backbone, and that Democrats were exposed as forcing their rule at all costs, on record refusing to negotiate and willing to close it all to get their prize possession. Now they own it. Immediate reactions are one thing, the tea party lost in the polls, but in one month following the generic party vote in one poll has swung back 11 points, from -8 to +3 R. That doesn't happen when people blame both parties. The so-called tea party took a stand, failed, and America lost out as a consequence. Now we at least we know where everyone stands.

Just when you thought government waste was bad enough, we learn that the government spent $400,000 to study the intelligence of ... Tea Party members. According to Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, however, the results weren't what the researcher was looking for: "Tea Party members have a better scientific comprehension than non-Tea Party members." The professor who conducted the "study" found the results "puzzling" -- because he clearly expected Tea Party members to be dumber than average. Former congressman Allen West put it this way: "I would find it unconscionable that people on the Left would believe that just because you believe in our founding documents, the ability to understand and comprehend the Federalist Papers, that for some odd reason you're going to be ... a dummy or not have the right type of cognitive abilities. ... I think you will find that most Tea Party members are very astute." But by golly, the government needed $400,000 of your money to figure that out.

Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, a diminutive Democratic giant whose 40 years in the House produced some of the most important legislation of the era, will announce on Thursday that he is retiring at the end of the year.Mr. Waxman, 74, joins the growing list of House members who are calling it quits, many in disappointment over the partisanship and ineffectiveness of a Congress that may end up as the least productive in history.“It’s been frustrating because of the extremism of Tea Party Republicans,” Mr. Waxman said in an interview on Wednesday. “Nothing seems to be happening.”READ MORE »http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/us/politics/henry-a-waxman-a-house-democratic-fixture-will-retire.html?emc=edit_na_20140130

"“It’s been frustrating because of the extremism of Tea Party Republicans,” Mr. Waxman said in an interview on Wednesday."

Yes. A scumbag to the very end. His beloved Democrat party. Good riddance. But as Levin says, there is no end to those right behind him ready to fill in and reclose ranks as the Socialist movement "marches forward".

I love Glenn, but find his site(s) a PITA to use, full of cookie crap, and often inefficient with my time. In short, I did not follow it closely But FWIW what I got out of it was Glenn looking to honestly examine himself to see how it can do a better job of contributing to a better America. In this case, I suspect he may have overdone the self0-examination a bit in the spirit of setting an example, but he's Glenn and he does that.

Tea Party Turns FiveYesterday was the fifth anniversary of CNBC's Rick Santelli reporting from the Chicago stock exchange floor and calling for a new "Tea Party." He was specifically opposed to Barack Obama's "stimulus," bailouts and other massive spending growth. "A lot of people have been credited with starting the modern-day tea party but make no mistake, it was Rick Santelli," said Glenn Beck. "His off the cuff monologue spoke the words that millions of Americans felt but could not nor dare not speak." The Tea Party remains a force in the GOP, and is the reason the party swept to victory in the House in 2010. We hope the movement can regain that momentum this fall, retake the Senate, and restore some fiscal sanity to Washington.

[tabl]"We used to be a bunch of crazies. We’re not a bunch of crazies. We are a very powerful force and only getting stronger,” Glenn said.[e][/table]"We used to be a bunch of crazies. We’re not a bunch of crazies. We are a very powerful force and only getting stronger,” Glenn said.[

“It was powerful”: Kathie Lee Gifford described an unexpected dinner with Glenn Beck and friends

Tuesday, Feb 25, 2014 at 6:22 PM EST

Over the weekend, Glenn had a fun dinner with some prominent NYC figures including Today Show‘s Kathie Lee Gifford, Tribeca Film Festival founder Craig Hatkoff, and famed fashion designer Norma Kamali. Gifford opened up about her dinner on The Today Show, praising the way that people of different ideological viewpoints could come together and discuss real solutions to the country’s problems.

“A rare thing for me to come back into the city on a Friday night and have a dinner but Craig Hatkoff, is married to Jane Rosenthal, Tribeca Film Festival and everything invited me and maybe about 20 people to come to a dinner at the Lambs Club here in NY, which is a beautiful beautiful room, in honor of Glenn Beck, who is a controversial gentleman but I have befriended him for the past few years and have great affection for him. And apparently so does Craig,” she said.

At the dinner, several people shared ideas about what the problems were and how people could come together to work towards the solutions by engaging in an honest and open dialogue with people of different viewpoints.

“It was so fascinating to be in a room with so many people coming from a completely different ideological place, all coming together to say ‘Wait a minute our country is in trouble. Where is our common ground? Because that is where our sacred ground is.’,” she continued.

“Everybody contributed, everybody was respectful. It was powerful because of it. It was powerful! So I am grateful that he invited us to come,” Gifford said.

On his radio show Monday, Glenn saw the meeting as a sign that people were starting to wake up, see the problems, and come together to work on solutions. Even better, he saw it as a way for the people who have recognized the growing issues in America, including Tea Party members and 9/12 Project members, to finally see some of their concerns being accepted by a larger, and at times unexpected, number of people.

“You have made such an impact by gathering together and being fans of this show and other shows and other things like this. You’re not dismissed anymore. We used to be a bunch of crazies. We’re not a bunch of crazies. We are a very powerful force and only getting stronger,” Glenn said.

One Tea Party slogan is "take back our country". This needs to be changed. While I understand the point and agree it has the unfortunate inadvertent message of exclusion.

Nativism. Throughout our history there has been dislike of new immigrant groups. Irish, Italians, Jews, Chinese etc. This message gives the inadvertent subliminal message that fits right in to that impression. Perhaps the slogan should be something akin to "preserve the greatness of our freedoms for everyone now and for all our children and welcomed immigrants of the future:

The Soul Of The GOPBy DICK MORRISPublished on TheHill.com on March 11, 2014

Establishment Republicans always remind us of how the Tea Party cost the GOP crucial seats in 2010 and 2012, which might have delivered control of the Senate to the Republican Party. And, they have a point. If Tea Party candidates had not won primaries in Delaware, Nevada, Colorado, Indiana and Missouri, these states might now be sending more Republicans to the Senate.

But, consider the alternative. Had Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) not won their primaries, imagine how lifeless the Republican minority in the Senate would be. The party's current intellectual and ideological cutting edge has come from Tea Party primary victories.

Would we rather have Charlie Crist, now running as a Democrat, in the Senate from Florida, or Marco Rubio?

Would we prefer mute Bob Bennett as the Republican senator from Utah, or the outspoken Mike Lee?

In Kentucky, would Trey Grayson, unknown and undistinguished, have been a better spokesman for our party than Rand Paul?

Would the go-along, get-along Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst have been anything close to the dashing, charismatic figure cut by Ted Cruz in Texas?

And in Wisconsin, one can only wonder if anyone other than Ron Johnson could have upended Russ Feingold to take the Senate seat in that liberal state.

Day in and day out, it is these firebrand Tea Party senators who are dominating the conservative benches in Washington. Add to their ilk the likes of Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and David Vitter (R-La.), and you have accounted for the most active, ideologically confrontational and politically effective members of the Republican Senate minority.

On the state level, has there been a governorship that better embodied the potential of Republican change than that of Scott Walker in Wisconsin? He has shown us all how to win the education issue for the GOP and has let us all see how curbing public-sector unions can return government to the people.

The fact is, like it or not, the Tea Party is the soul of the Republican Party.

There is no better example of the need to have the Tea Party continue its cleansing of the U.S. Senate than the looming primary in Mississippi. Thad Cochran (R-Miss), 76, has been the leading pork dispenser on the Republican side of the aisle for decades. He once vied for the honor with Alaska's Ted Stevens; now he has it all to himself. Silent on major national issues, rarely heard from in the Senate, he stands as an apostle of the old ways, pursuing increased government spending with all the vigor of a Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) or Scoop Jackson (D-Wash.) of a bygone era. Without a scorecard, you couldn't tell which of these old-fashioned senators is a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a conservative.

We will not return to national power by electing faceless, nameless Republican senators who do not stand up and never fight hard.

The passivity of the Republican minority in the Senate is the stuff of legend. But the Tea Party members have changed all that and deserve our thanks and commendation.

Sometimes, the amateurs of the Tea Party lead us astray. No one can deny that Missouri, Indiana and Delaware would be represented by Republicans had the Tea Party not nominated candidates who made themselves unelectable. And it is probable that we would have won seats in Nevada and Colorado as well but for Tea Party primary victories.

But a lifeless, soulless GOP would be no inspiration to anyone.

Rubio, Cruz, Paul, Johnson, Lee: These names light up our sky and animate our party. Where would we be without their star power?

The Tea Party movement is now five years old. With the 2014-midterm elections on the horizon, we should take account of who we were, where we are, and how to restore our lost momentum moving forward.

In the "wave" midterm election of 2010, the Tea Party revolt not only handed the GOP a historic turnover in the House of Representatives, it also led to the election of conservatives in state executive and legislative branches across the nation. After the smoke cleared, Republicans found themselves winners of 63 House seats, 6 Senate seats, 6 governorships and a whopping 680 state legislative seats, giving Republicans control of more state legislatures than at any time since 1928.

But the Tea Party landslide in 2010 did not extend to wins in 2012.

Why?

Because in 2010, the movement stood for a unified set of principles under the umbrella of Essential Liberty, advocating the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and the promotion of free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. (If those principles sound familiar, it's because they've been the essential ingredients of The Patriot Post's mission statement since our inception -- long before there was a Tea Party.)

Unfortunately, in 2012 and now again in 2014, the movement is defined more by whom it opposes rather than what it supports.

How did that happen?

As I wrote ahead of the 2010 election in "The Second Tea Party Revolt," "The greatest strength of the Tea Party movement is the lack of any central organization -- it's a genuine grassroots movement. We derive great strength in forming a unified front uniformly devoted to Liberty."

I wrote further, "However, inevitably, self-appointed Tea Party leaders will arise, as will organizations claiming ownership of the movement, and that will undermine the power and constrain the future potential of its grassroots momentum. ... We must refuse to waste our precious political capital on fratricidal infighting based on ideological purity, and must instead, frame every debate around First Principles and Rule of Law, defining what we support, not just who we are oppose."

Indeed, "leaders" and organizations claiming ownership of the Tea Party did arise, and have undermined our cause, turning it into a contest for party power rather than Liberty.

That contest was on display last week at the American Conservative Union's annual confab, CPAC 2014, which attracted a record crowd this year, primarily younger conservatives from colleges and universities. While some of the lineup at the CPAC podium devoted their time to the common cause of Liberty, others did what they do best -- focus on who they are against rather than what they support.

A soft case in point would be Sarah Palin's warning to the "Beltway Boys" in reference to the 2010 election results: "You didn't build that. The Tea Party did." Great line, but she uttered not a word about the 2012 election results, when both GOP conservatives and moderates had become more consumed with deconstruction than building.The internecine warfare in the GOP may be good for cornering constituents and emptying their wallets, but it is most assuredly and demonstrably NOT good for advancing Liberty.

My favorite former radical leftist, David Horowitz, asks, "Can the marriage between the Tea Party and the GOP survive?" His answer, "It better."

Horowitz writes, "How do we make this marriage survive? First of all, by recognizing that the basic difference between the Tea Party and the Republican Party is a matter of tactics and temperament, not policy and ideology. ... I am a huge fan of what the Tea Party represents, though not always what it does. I believe the emergence of the Tea Party is the most important political development in conservatism in the last 25 years, and is possibly the last best hope for our country."

But he notes, because there is so much internal strife within the GOP, we "fail to take the fight to the enemy camp."

And the Democrats are laughing all the way to the ballot box.

Fortunately, the principled alliance of the original grassroots Tea Party has not been fully co-opted by those individuals and organizations forming "Tea v. GOP" circular firing squads. There is an emerging consensus from the frontlines that we need to reunite under that umbrella of what we are for -- Liberty -- and not who we are against.For generations, the Democrat Party has bet its political fortunes on the tried-and-true politics of disunity, dividing Americans by gender, race, creed, ethnicity and income.But in the last two election cycles, the GOP has perfected a strategy to divide-and-conquer itself by way of intra-party fratricide. In the inimitable words of Walt Kelly's lead swamp comic strip character Pogo Possum, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

On that note, let's revisit the political model for success adopted by Ronald Reagan -- the "Eleventh Commandment."

In his 1990 autobiography, "An American Life," President Reagan noted how this powerful political maxim came about during his first campaign for the California governorship: "The personal attacks against me during the primary finally became so heavy that the state Republican chairman, Gaylord Parkinson, postulated what he called the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. It's a rule I followed during that campaign and have ever since."

Reagan had witnessed the unrelenting attacks against fellow conservative Barry Goldwater by "establishment Republicans" of that era, who claimed Goldwater was too conservative. In effect, they divided the Republican Party, which led to his defeat in the 1964 presidential election.

In his 1966 gubernatorial campaign, Reagan's primary opponent, George Christopher, was leveling the same charges against him. Parkinson's order to stop the intra-party fighting prevailed, however, and Reagan went on to win the primary and the general election, serving two terms as California governor (1967–1975) on his way to becoming the greatest president of the 20th century.

The lesson here is that we should continue to field conservative opposition to moderate Republicans, but in doing so, we should focus on what we support, tenfold, over whom we oppose.

Notably, the current manifestation of infighting between conservatives and moderates in the GOP is not limited to vigorous principled debates in primaries. The internal strife has created ideological division within the party as a whole, which was clearly detrimental in the 2012 presidential and congressional elections -- and will be even more detrimental moving forward.

Now, I certainly don't want to leave the impression that the blame for this division belongs to fratricidal Tea Partiers alone. When Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says of Tea Party primary candidates, "I think we are going to crush them everywhere. I don't think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country," it generates a lot of ill will. And when Speaker of the House John Boehner refers to Tea Party conservatives as "knuckle-draggers," it does the same. And understandably so.

What Republicans of all stripes need to do is adopt Reagan's model for restoration, or look at what we accomplished in Tennessee over the last decade by emphasizing party-building rather than division.

The fact is, most Republicans in the House and Senate score above 80% in the ACU's congressional ratings. We ought to be able to build on our strategic common ground rather than divide on our tactical -- and fractional -- differences.

As Benjamin Franklin said famously when signing the Declaration of Independence, "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately." Franklin's words should be the motto of the modern GOP -- and a rallying cry for the restoration of Essential Liberty.

Hiltzik is a Democratic PR operative that works for Beck, but also worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, Eliot Spitzer’s 1998 attorney general campaign, and for studio head Harvey Weinstein. He also represents Katie Couric, Alec Baldwin, Annie Leibovitz and Don Imus. Matthew’s father, George Hiltzik, brokered the radio gigs of blogger Matt Drudge and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

The close friendship and lucrative business relationship that has developed between the 45-year-old conservative firebrand and the 37-year-old former Democratic operative shows how partisan media personalities get discovered, promoted and catapulted into the political stratosphere, even when the talent and the talent broker have opposing ideologies. But for Hiltzik’s former Democratic allies, the alliance is still mostly shocking.

It was also interesting that Matt Hiltzik considers “Democratic activist and public relations powerbroker” Ken Sunshine a mentor. Sunshine advises Color of Change and Green for All, two groups founded by Van Jones, who was repeatedly attacked by Beck.

And it’s not just Sunshine’s clients who are subject to Beck’s drubbings, it’s also his onetime mentor. The current secretary of state, for example, did not respond to calls about Hiltzik and his top client’s tirades against the Obama administration. Asked if he thought Hillary Clinton approved of his current promotion of Beck, who has called her, among other things, “the antichrist,” Hiltzik said, “She has a lot more important things to worry about.”

“Matt Hiltzik is a top professional who can’t save Glenn Beck from his vulgar, hateful ignorance,” said Robert Zimmerman, a public relations executive in New York, Democratic National Committee member and close friend of Hiltzik’s. “But he can get him extensive publicity while he goes down in flames.”*********

Patriots' DayThe Roots of the First American RevolutionBy Mark Alexander • April 16, 2014

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" --Samuel Adams (1776)

Each year on April 19th, we honor the anniversary of Patriots' Day with its inherent defense of Liberty, which is our inspiration to this day. In doing so, we mark the opening salvo of the first American Revolution in 1775, and the first step toward the establishment of an eternal declaration of human Liberty, subordinating the rule of men to Creator-inspired Rule of Law.

A quick search of Barack Hussein Obama's White House website reveals not a single reference to this most notable date in the history of our nation. Undoubtedly the statist regime currently occupying the Executive Branch prefers to ignore this formative event, as the historic call to arms ultimately turned back a growing tide of tyranny.I invite you to share this brief treatise on the roots of the First American Revolution.

On December 16th, 1773, "rebels" from Boston, members of a secret organization of American Patriots called the Sons of Liberty, boarded three East India Company ships and threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. This iconic event, in protest of oppressive taxation and tyrannical rule, is immortalized as "The Boston Tea Party."Resistance to the British Crown had been mounting over enforcement of the 1764 Sugar Act, 1765 Stamp Act and 1767 Townshend Act, which led to the Boston Massacre and gave rise to the slogan, "No taxation without representation."

But it was the 1773 Tea Act, under which the Crown collected a three pence tax on each pound of tea imported to the Colonies, which instigated the first Tea Party protest and seeded the American Revolution. Indeed, as James Madison noted in an 1823 reflection, "The people of the U.S. owe their Independence and their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent."

The Tea Party uprising galvanized the Colonial movement opposing British parliamentary acts, as such acts were a violation of the natural, charter and constitutional rights of the British colonists.

In response to the Colonial rebellion, the British enacted additional punitive measures, labeled the "Intolerable Acts," in hopes of suppressing the burgeoning insurrection. Far from accomplishing their desired outcome, however, the Crown's countermeasures led colonists to convene the First Continental Congress on September 5th, 1774, in Philadelphia.

By the spring of 1775, civil discontent was at a tipping point, and American Patriots in Massachusetts and other colonies prepared to cast off their masters.

On the eve of April 18th, 1775, General Thomas Gage, Royal military governor of Massachusetts, dispatched a force of 700 British Army regulars, under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, with secret orders to capture and destroy arms and supplies stored by the Massachusetts militia in the town of Concord. Indeed, the first shots of the eight-year struggle for American independence were in response to the government's attempt to disarm the people.

Patriot militiamen under leadership of the Sons of Liberty anticipated this raid, and the confrontation between militia and British regulars en route to Concord ignited the fuse of the American Revolution.

Near midnight on April 18th, Paul Revere, who arranged for advance warning of British movements, departed Charlestown (near Boston) for Lexington and Concord in order to warn John Hancock, Samuel Adams and other Sons of Liberty that the British Army was marching to arrest them and to seize their weapons caches. After meeting with Hancock and Adams in Lexington, Revere was captured, but his Patriot ally Samuel Prescott continued to Concord and warned militiamen along the way.In the early dawn of April 19th, the first Patriots' Day, 77 militiamen under the command of Captain John Parker assembled on the town green at Lexington, where they soon faced Smith's overwhelming force of British regulars. Parker did not expect shots to be exchanged, but his orders were: "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." A few links away from the militia column, the British Major John Pitcairn swung his sword and said, "Lay down your arms, you damned rebels!"

Not willing to sacrifice his small band of Patriots on the Green, as Parker later wrote in sworn deposition, "I immediately ordered our Militia to disperse, and not to fire." But the Patriots did not lay down their arms as ordered, and as Parker noted, "Immediately said Troops made their appearance and rushed furiously, fired upon, and killed eight of our Party without receiving any Provocation therefor from us."

The British continued to Concord, where they divided and searched for armament stores. Later in the day, the second confrontation between regulars and militiamen occurred as British light infantry companies faced rapidly growing ranks of militia and Minutemen at Concord's Old North Bridge. From depositions on both sides, the British fired first on the militia, killing two and wounding four.

This time, however, the militia commander, Major John Buttrick, yelled the order, "Fire, for God's sake, fellow soldiers, fire!" Fire they did, commencing with "the shot heard round the world," as immortalized by poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. With that shot, farmers and laborers, landowners and statesmen alike, were bringing upon themselves the sentence of death for treason. In the ensuing firefight, the British took heavy casualties and in discord retreated to Concord village for reinforcements, and then retreated back toward Lexington.

In retreat to Lexington, British regulars took additional casualties, including those suffered in an ambush by the reassembled ranks of John Parker's militia – "Parker's Revenge" as it became known. The English were reinforced with 1,000 troops in Lexington, but the King's men were no match for the militiamen, who inflicted heavy casualties upon the Redcoats along their 20-mile tactical retreat to Boston.

Thus began the great campaign to reject tyranny and embrace the difficult toils of securing individual Liberty. "[T]he People alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it," wrote Samuel Adams.

Why would the first generation of American Patriots forgo, in the inimitable words of Sam Adams, "the tranquility of servitude" for "the animating contest of freedom"?The answer to that question -- Liberty or Death -- defined the spirit of American Patriotism then, as it defines the spirit of American Patriots today. The ideological descendants of those who once pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor "today pledge to support and defend" Liberty as enshrined in our United States Constitution.

In 1776, George Washington wrote in his General Orders, "The time is now near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die."Of that resolve, President Ronald Reagan said, "Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation..."

Indeed, the time is always at hand when American Patriots must reaffirm whether we are to be freemen or slaves. This November's midterm elections may seem trivial in comparison to the challenges faced by our Founders, but the results are critical to the future of Liberty.

Fellow Patriots, keep the torch of Liberty shining bright with your support for our 2014 Patriots' Day Campaign. The Patriot Post is a touchstone for the growing ranks of American Patriots across our nation, and an effective recruiting tool for new Patriots of all ages. Please consider supporting The Patriot Post with a donation however large or small online, or print and mail our donor form.Pro Deo et Constitutione -- Libertas aut MorsSemper Fortis Vigilate Paratus et Fideliswww.patriotpost.com

i don't have the time right now for a proper conversation, but I note that this is going to be used as confirmation by many that the Tea Party is racist. Let's use the Tea Party thread to discuss.

Government over-reach does not mean that the victim is someone with whom we share values or want as a political partner.

I heard part of Glenn Beck radio yesterday. Bundy mistreated Beck's Blaze reporter, apologized, then mis-treated another Blaze reporter the next day. Before the racial rant, this was not a person who we want leading anything much less a call to arms. Federal over-reach belongs in federal court. We change administrations through the electoral process and we change the federal courts even more slowly, but through the same electoral representative process. Fighting the government with arms, as with the revolutionary war, is not the first recourse.

Regarding race, one might observe that among what is wrong in America, blacks are disproportionately affected. The tea party reaction to that from my view is color blind and forward looking. We want people to be entrepreneurs, work freely in a profession of their choice, get educated, be productive, be self-sufficient, support families, to make their own positive choices freely.

It must also be said that some of us, including me at various moments as my postings in the Unarmed and Armed Resistance thread show, were swayed more than we should have been by the imagery which this man used. Some of us were willing to show up with guns to defend a man whose completely unsound legal theories had been trounced in court for over 20 years from having his cattle seized by the State to collect the judgement to which it was entitled. Yes the State acted wrongly, scarily, and militaristicly in the name of collecting a money judgment, and I am glad to have seen them backed off, but this whole affair is going to ramp up the liberal fascists in their determination to take our guns and give them ammo in making their case.

The media distorts information to the point of social division. This is a photo of myself and the resilient, often charismatic, and maybe not so tactful Cliven Bundy. He's a cowboy and a helluva family man, not an orator. One thing he definitely isn't - a racist. I found his comments to not only be NOT racist, but his own view of his experiences. Who the heck are we to determine another man's perspective on the world around him?! Just because Picasso's view of the world was abstract, does it negate the fact that his art was genuine? Furthermore, if you take the time to do your own research, you'll find that his statements about some black Americans actually hold weight. He posed a hypothetical question. He said, "I wonder IF" ... Hell, I'm black and I often wonder about the same about the decline of the black family. Bottom line is that we are all slaves in this waning republic, no matter our skin color. Mr. Bundy could have used any racial demographic as an example: Native Americans on reservations, whites in trailer parks, etc. He noticed the crippling effects of receiving government "assistance" and the long term result of accepting handouts. It's not progress at all. I challenge Sean Hannity, Rand Paul, and others to read my comment and reconsider their position in this matter. Individual liberties are at stake here, yours and mine. THAT is the issue. Don't let the liberal media and ignoramuses like Glenn Beck and that weasel Harry Reid make you lose sight of the real issue here: The federal government is a burgeoning behemoth and a bully on a once constitutional playground.

I sincerely hope you real patriots out there can see through the smoke.

Yes. Distance ourselves from stupidity and go back on offence. Their governance has failed and these morons have nothing to do with our desired coalition or agenda.

The battle between the Karl Rove (establishment) types and tea party types is largely an illusion. Rove et al want us to stop nominating unvetted candidates that will implode in a general election, lose and hurt other candidate's chances across the nation. So do I. The choice between taking the RINO and the one who will publicly justify rape or bigotry is a false choice. We can find high high quality, articulate, competent, common sense conservatives all across the fruited plain. There are many, many, many great candidates out there.

Triva: Alan Keyes was the Rep. candidate for US Senate from Illinois who lost, and lost badly, to Baraq Hussein Obama. In fairness it should be noted that he was brought in at the last moment because the intended Rep candidate was a "values" candidate whose wife, as part of their divorce proceedings, accused him of going to titty bars.

It is, in a way, too bad that Cliven Bundy — the rancher who became a right-wing hero after refusing to pay fees for grazing his animals on federal land, and bringing in armed men to support his defiance — has turned out to be a crude racist. Why? Because his ranting has given conservatives an easy out, a way to dissociate themselves from his actions without facing up to the terrible wrong turn their movement has taken.

For at the heart of the standoff was a perversion of the concept of freedom, which for too much of the right has come to mean the freedom of the wealthy to do whatever they want, without regard to the consequences for others.

Start with the narrow issue of land use. For historical reasons, the federal government owns a lot of land in the West; some of that land is open to ranching, mining and so on. Like any landowner, the Bureau of Land Management charges fees for the use of its property. The only difference from private ownership is that by all accounts the government charges too little — that is, it doesn’t collect as much money as it could, and in many cases doesn’t even charge enough to cover the costs that these private activities impose. In effect, the government is using its ownership of land to subsidize ranchers and mining companies at taxpayers’ expense.

It’s true that some of the people profiting from implicit taxpayer subsidies manage, all the same, to convince themselves and others that they are rugged individualists. But they’re actually welfare queens of the purple sage.

And this in turn means that treating Mr. Bundy as some kind of libertarian hero is, not to put too fine a point on it, crazy. Suppose he had been grazing his cattle on land belonging to one of his neighbors, and had refused to pay for the privilege. That would clearly have been theft — and brandishing guns when someone tried to stop the theft would have turned it into armed robbery. The fact that in this case the public owns the land shouldn’t make any difference.

So what were people like Sean Hannity of Fox News, who went all in on Mr. Bundy’s behalf, thinking? Partly, no doubt, it was the general demonization of government — if someone looks as if he is defying Washington, he’s a hero, never mind the details. Partly, one suspects, it was also about race — not Mr. Bundy’s blatant racism, but the general notion that government takes money from hard-working Americans and gives it to Those People. White people who wear cowboy hats while profiting from government subsidies just don’t fit the stereotype.

Most of all, however — or at least that’s how it seems to me — the Bundy fiasco was a byproduct of the dumbing down that seems ever more central to the way America’s right operates.

American conservatism used to have room for fairly sophisticated views about the role of government. Its economic patron saint used to be Milton Friedman, who advocated aggressive money-printing, if necessary, to avoid depressions. It used to include environmentalists who took pollution seriously but advocated market-based solutions like cap-and-trade or emissions taxes rather than rigid rules.

But today’s conservative leaders were raised on Ayn Rand’s novels and Ronald Reagan’s speeches (as opposed to his actual governance, which was a lot more flexible than the legend). They insist that the rights of private property are absolute, and that government is always the problem, never the solution.

The trouble is that such beliefs are fundamentally indefensible in the modern world, which is rife with what economists call externalities — costs that private actions impose on others, but which people have no financial incentive to avoid. You might want, for example, to declare that what a farmer does on his own land is entirely his own business; but what if he uses pesticides that contaminate the water supply, or antibiotics that speed the evolution of drug-resistant microbes? You might want to declare that government intervention never helps; but who else can deal with such problems?

Well, one answer is denial — insistence that such problems aren’t real, that they’re invented by elitists who want to take away our freedom. And along with this anti-intellectualism goes a general dumbing-down, an exaltation of supposedly ordinary folks who don’t hold with this kind of stuff. Think of it as the right’s duck-dynastic moment.

You can see how Mr. Bundy, who came across as a straight-talking Marlboro Man, fit right into that mind-set. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a bit more straight-talking than expected.

I’d like to think that the whole Bundy affair will cause at least some of the people who backed him to engage in self-reflection, and ask how they ended up lending support, even briefly, to someone like that. But I don’t expect it to happen.

Krugman has it backwards. Bundy wasn't a right wing hero. BLM was a fascist villain. They own 80% of the land and act like jack-booted thugs. Some rose to oppose them.

Not mentioned by or questioned of this liberal icon is when he decided to end his alliance with the greedy, law-breaking, crony-governmentists at Enron. (He stopped consulting for them when they stopped paying him.) And no mention of the other story, that the Clippers owner, a billionaire, who asks his African-American mistress not to post pictures of herself with blacks on Instagram - is a 'liberal' Democrat. It just doesn't fit the mold.

Krugman and his hypocrisies are not the point here. The point of posting his article is to respond well to it. Bundy WAS and for some IS a hero to many on the right. If all we have in comeback to his arguments is "Fascist villain" and "Jack-booted thugs!" we are fuct.

Republican Party leaders Tuesday made significant strides in their effort to defang—or at least co-opt—the tea party as an insurgent political force, as GOP voters rejected a number of antiestablishment candidates in primary elections.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a pillar of the party establishment who had come under fire from the right, triumphed easily over his primary challenger in Kentucky. Candidates backed by party officials and business groups advanced in Georgia, Idaho and elsewhere. Taken together, the results could help GOP leaders reassert their dominance over conservative insurgents who have been roiling the party for the past five years.

Voters will decide in six states, Tuesday, as to who will represent their party in the midterm elections. Establishment Republicans hope voters will deliver a knockout blow to the more conservative Tea Party candidates who many in the mainstream section of the GOP see as unelectable.

But that doesn't point to any shift to the political center among Republicans on Capitol Hill, or a return to a pre-tea-party era, when compromise with Democrats wasn't viewed with such deep suspicion.

Mr. McConnell, who led Louisville businessman Matt Bevin by a 60%-to-36% margin with nearly all precincts reporting, will need to keep an eye on his right flank in the coming months and to corral Bevin supporters in order to beat his Democratic opponent.

"The tough race is behind us; it's time to unite," Mr. McConnell said Tuesday night, referring to the primary.

House Speaker John Boehner, who himself easily defeated a tea-party primary challenge in his Ohio district in early May, saw some of his trusted allies triumph Tuesday, including Rep. Mike Simpson in Idaho, who faced a stiff challenge from the right. Nonetheless, the speaker's room to maneuver legislatively is limited because House Republicans' most-conservative faction has a voice in whether he continues as speaker in the next Congress.

Mr. Boehner, asked Tuesday whether he believed the tea party's influence was waning, didn't seem tempted to gloat. Instead, he argued that the conflict between the tea party and GOP leaders had been overblown. "The tea party has brought great energy to our political process," he said. There isn't "that big a difference between what you all call the tea party and your average conservative Republican: We're against Obamacare; we think taxes are too high; we think the government's too big."

Indeed, Capitol Hill is littered with legislative standoffs that bear the hallmarks of tea-party influence. Mr. Boehner is considered unlikely to advance an immigration overhaul, opposed by tea-party-backed lawmakers, this year. A reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, which is backed by business groups, is in jeopardy in Congress in the face of stiff conservative opposition.

To be sure, there are a few signs of a loosening grip by the tea party on Capitol Hill. The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a big water-projects bill over the opposition of Heritage Action, a conservative group that grades lawmakers' voting records to help conservatives decide whom to support or oppose. And congressional Republicans for months have been steering clear of the tea-party-style brinkmanship that led to last fall's government shutdown.

"Republican primary voters are speaking out and making clear that they don't want professional tea-party groups hijacking primaries and picking their candidates," said Brian Walsh, a former aide to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "Those days are over."

But Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.), a senior House member close to Mr. Boehner, said he was glad to see in the primary results a kind of "rapprochement" between the party establishment and tea-party voters.

"There's a sense of satisfaction, more than relief, that we've learned some lessons," he said. "My party is knitting itself back together."

The results from Georgia were among those pointing to the power of party leaders and their business allies at the voting booth. Their favored candidates, businessman David Perdue and Rep. Jack Kingston (R., Ga.), advanced to a runoff election for the GOP nomination for an open Senate seat.

National GOP leaders and their allies had feared that two other candidates known for courting the most conservative voters, Reps. Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey, would advance to the runoff. The winner of the July 22 runoff will face Michelle Nunn, who sailed to the Democratic nomination on Tuesday.

In Oregon, GOP leaders also cheered the Senate primary victory of Monica Wehby, a physician thought to have broader appeal in the Democratic-dominated state than her more-conservative opponents.

Still, Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks, a conservative group, said the tea-party movement is having a long-term impact on the agenda of the GOP as incumbents embrace their priorities of cutting government spending and rolling back the health-care overhaul.

"We sometimes lose battles, but we are winning the war," Mr. Brandon said. "They are all running on our issues."

This year's GOP primaries mark an important chapter in the evolving saga of the tea party in American politics. From its origins in 2009 as a grass-roots movement that opposed bank bailouts and President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul, tea-party activism helped the GOP win control of the House in 2010. Its take-no-prisoners tactics inspired a major legislative confrontation with Mr. Obama that produced a landmark 2011 budget deal imposing durable spending limits across the federal government.

From those triumphs over Democrats, however, the tea party morphed into a force for change within the GOP—with a more mixed outcome.

Some of its Senate primary-election victories in 2010 and 2012 turned into party losses in the general election, which most observers believe cost the GOP control of the Senate. Conservatives' taste for playing legislative chicken led to last fall's 16-day government shutdown, which most considered politically harmful for the party. GOP leaders have since shunned those tactics, while working to block tea-party candidates they considered too weak to win in the fall—especially in the crucial fight for control of the Senate.

Justin Barasky, a spokesman for the Democrats' main Senate campaign arm, said GOP leaders may be celebrating prematurely.

"In order to avoid losing to the tea party, Washington Republicans have embraced their candidates and policies," said Mr. Barasky. "It's a good strategy in the primaries, but one that forecasts defeat for Republicans in the general election this fall."

And the victories over the tea party have come at a price to the party—literally, in campaign spending by senior Republicans, who might otherwise have been able to put their money toward defeating Democratic general-election opponents. Mr. McConnell has already spent more than $2.4 million on television ads before the primary, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Tea Party AgonistesThe real reasons that GOP insurgents are losing in the primaries.Updated May 21, 2014 7:49 p.m. ET

The media's latest political line is that the Republican establishment has finally crushed the tea party. The truth, as usual, is more interesting. The tea party has already changed the GOP on policy, and mostly for the better, but it is suffering this year because the candidates and operatives acting in its name have been motivated more by personal than policy agendas. That's a shame because the GOP needs the tea party to prevent it from lapsing back into the do-little caucus of the George W. Bush-Tom DeLay years.

Marco Rubio (Fla.), Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Pat Toomey (Pa.)—those are three Senators elected with tea party support in 2010. Yet they are now part of the Senate GOP mainstream, tugging the conference in a more reform direction. So is Rand Paul on domestic policy. And don't forget New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte, who breaks with Mr. Paul on foreign policy but is making her mark as one of the Senate's smarter young conservatives.Enlarge Image

Former Kentucky senatorial challenger Matt Bevin Reuters

These Senators won with the help of the tea party wave in 2010, but they also won because they were men and women of accomplishment. The tea party rode these candidates as much as they rode the tea party.

Now consider Matt Bevin, Greg Brannon and Steve Stockman. They are among the tea party champions this year who have lost by large margins in GOP Senate primaries. They didn't lose because the GOP primary electorate has suddenly been captured by "moderates," or some mythical establishment in the Burning Tree locker room.

They lost because they were inferior candidates who differed little from their GOP opponents on policy but seemed less capable of winning in November. GOP voters sensibly opted for the conservatives with the better chance to retake the Senate from Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer.

Far more than 2010, the tea party this year has also been hijacked by Washington-based groups that have personal axes to grind. That's especially true in Kentucky, where a cabal of former aides to former Senator Jim DeMint force-fed Mr. Bevin's challenge to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

This wasn't about policy business; it was strictly personal revenge to oust Mr. McConnell as leader and establish the Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks, RedState and certain talking radio heads as the main GOP power brokers. Mr. Bevin was a weak candidate who attacked Mr. McConnell for supporting the 2008 bank rescue only to have supported it himself while he was in private business. On Tuesday he got about 36% of the vote.

These same Beltway groups also hurt tea party candidates by pushing last year's government shutdown strategy. The shutdown, which had no chance to succeed, marked the low point in recent GOP polling. But far from mobilizing populist outrage against incumbents, the failed strategy seems to have educated Republican voters about the futility of kamikaze gestures and the candidates who endorse them. Voters are seeing through the self-interest.

The shame is that this tea party detour will hurt the very cause of reform its supporters claim to champion. Mr. McConnell was brilliant in uniting his conference against ObamaCare in 2010, but he can also be an overcautious leader who fails to articulate a united GOP message or strategy. Long-time incumbents Mr. McConnell and Thad Cochran (Miss.) are too enamored of spending and need the prod of the tea party to stay on a reform path.

The broader point is that the GOP establishment, to the extent it exists, and the tea party need each other to accomplish their political goals. And at the local level they are often now one and the same. The candidates who win Senate primaries will need grass-roots enthusiasm to prevail in November. And the tea party needs the mainstream GOP incumbents who can win among independents and in states like Illinois, New Hampshire and Maine to have any chance of building a majority large enough to replace ObamaCare.

Democrats and their media allies are pushing the establishment vs. tea party narrative in large part because they want the GOP to be divided in November. The only way to retake the Senate is to disappoint them.

Republican Sen. Thad Cochran's runoff victory Tuesday exposed the limits of tea-party power at the polls, but conservative activists retain considerable influence in Congress as they fight the Export-Import Bank, an immigration law overhaul and higher taxes to repair bridges and roads.

Mr. Cochran's narrow win over a tea-party-backed challenger, coming after the defeat of conservative activists in other primary elections this year, offered further proof that GOP leaders and their business allies have built a successful strategy to nominate candidates they believe give them the best odds to win in November.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said immigration reform still has a shot despite long odds, speaking at a Wall Street Journal breakfast. Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) agreed that Congress shouldn't give up on immigration reform - both for the good of the country and the GOP.

But the disconnect between tea-party election losses and the movement's continued power in Washington underscores deep divisions inside the GOP that show no sign of abating after a busy spring in which so-called establishment candidates won far more intraparty contests than they lost.

The GOP leadership, for example, benefited from millions of dollars in campaign spending by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to promote leadership-backed candidates in nearly a dozen primaries, part of a broad effort to stem tea party momentum. And yet three of the Chamber's top legislative priorities—an overhaul of immigration law, a replenished Highway Trust Fund and reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank—are in jeopardy because of conservative resistance in Congress.

The Chamber spent $1.2 million to support Mr. Cochran in Mississippi in his victory over state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who was supported by local and national tea-party groups.

Also Tuesday, national conservative groups fell short in Oklahoma, as their favored candidate lost a competitive GOP Senate primary. Both results follow similar outcomes earlier this year in Kentucky and North Carolina in which the candidates backed by tea-party activists failed to win the nomination.

GOP officials said the results didn't mark an end to the clout of tea-party activists in and out of Washington. "I'm not sure the tea party has peaked…They're still extremely viable" at a time when anger at Washington is high, said Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) at a breakfast Wednesday sponsored by The Wall Street Journal.

Chamber officials say their goal is to elect candidates "who want to come to Washington to solve problems" not just shut down the government. "Governing is the theme we have inserted into this cycle," said Scott Reed, who advises the Chamber on strategy. "It all starts with quality candidates."

Among the evidence of tea party power: Newly elevated House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), facing the prospect that another Republican would challenge him after the November midterms, recently said he would allow the charter of the Export-Import Bank—which provides financing for the export of American goods and services—to expire, adopting a policy position championed by a more conservative potential rival, House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas).

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) said to "do nothing" in Iraq could lead to collapse, and called for airstrikes, while criticizing President Obama's leadership on foreign affairs. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said he remain very wary of nation building in Iraq.

Congressional conservatives also are at the center of a battle over legislation to replenish the Highway Trust Fund, which funnels federal gas-tax revenue to states to help pay for road and bridge maintenance. With a shortfall looming, House Republicans won't accept Democratic proposals to boost revenue, in an acrimonious standoff that could force states to abandon transportation projects and lay off workers.

Mississippi represented the conservative insurgents' best shot at knocking off an incumbent Republican senator. Their favored candidate, Mr. McDaniel, outpolled Mr. Cochran in the initial round of voting on June 3, though he didn't top the 50% vote needed to avoid a runoff.

And unlike in earlier primary fights, conservative groups heavily outspent Mr. Cochran's outside allies, pouring more than $7.3 million into the state on behalf of Mr. McDaniel, compared with the $4.3 million spent by Cochran backers, according to numbers tallied by the Center for Responsive Politics.

That changed down the stretch, however. In the week leading up to the runoff, Mr. Cochran and his outside allies spent three times more on television and radio ads than did Mr. McDaniel and his outside backers, according to the center's tally. The Chamber spent $455,910 in the last week to benefit Mr. Cochran, compared with the $77,029 spent by Mr. McDaniel's biggest backer among national groups, the political arm of the Club for Growth, which promotes small-government policies.

The Club's political arm put more than $3.1 million into the race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, far more than it spent on any other primary this year. Other groups that spent heavily to oust Mr. Cochran include FreedomWorks for America, the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund.

Club president Chris Chocola, a former GOP congressman from Indiana, said he hoped Mr. Cochran would gain "a new appreciation of voter frustration about the threats to economic freedom and national solvency." The group is leading the opposition to the Export-Import Bank, which it sees as providing a form of corporate welfare for big companies, particularly Boeing, and intervening inappropriately in the economy by picking winners and losers.

The Cochran win comes just a few weeks after conservative activists scored an upset by ousting former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in his GOP primary in Virginia, a shocking result that scrambled the prevailing narrative that Republican leaders and their business allies were reclaiming control of their party.

But tea-party activists in Virginia were quick to point out that most outside groups didn't spend money against Mr. Cantor.

Conservative activists hoped that wins in Mississippi and Oklahoma would put an exclamation point on Mr. Cantor loss, reanimating the movement.

Tea-party allies moved to build on the apparent momentum. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, endorsed former state House Speaker T.W. Shannon in Oklahoma in an ad sponsored by the Senate Conservatives Fund. Mr. Shannon lost.

The Cochran win should prevent Democrats from putting an otherwise-safe Republican seat in play, improving the GOP's odds of recapturing the Senate in November. Democratic officials said Mr. Cochran's victory make the state harder to win.

Top officials at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the party's main Senate election arm, put their reputation on the line by throwing their support behind Mr. Cochran, savaging his primary opponent and sending staff to Mississippi. And when NRSC officials saw conservative groups easing up, they steered another $200,000 to voter turnout efforts, an official said.

NRSC officials entered the election cycle eager to avoid a replay of 2010 and 2012, when they felt they had squandered winnable seats because primary voters nominated candidates who didn't go on to win in November. This year, they made their preferences clear in primary contests in some states and have worked to ensure the candidates they backed won crowded primaries in Iowa, North Carolina and Oregon. They also worked to prevent two outspoken candidates in Georgia from securing a spot in the July runoff.

"Results matter," said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the Senate campaign committee. "Our mission is simple—to build a Republican majority, and that means keeping Democratic opportunities to a minimum."

The WSJ, away from its Editorial Page, is often no better than POTH and the rest of the MSM:

Chamber officials say their goal is to elect candidates "who want to come to Washington to solve problems" not just shut down the government. "Governing is the theme we have inserted into this cycle," said Scott Reed, who advises the Chamber on strategy. "It all starts with quality candidates."

They are quoting a "Chamber official", but the quote marks stop and start around the shut down the government libel/smear and go unanswered in the piece. Who shut the government, other than Obamacare, down? I think that was the Dem Senate and President. Funding bills start in the House and the House fully funded everything other than ObamaCare. It turns out the rules of Obamacare they were pressured to fully fund violated federal law. Small details for agenda based advocacy and reporting.

Who supports putting a federal government focus on governing more than the tea party? Instead we focus the federal government focus on usurping the powers and freedoms of the states and the people, and smear those who object.

It is quite easy, and meaningless, to win arguments against straw men.

Akin, Mourdock, Ken Buck and O'Donnell and whoever else that failed the Republican Party from the so-called tea party, of which there is none, did not fail in their elections because they advanced tea party principles. They failed because they were unqualified or undisciplined and lost their focus on advancing those principles.

There is something quite eery about 'business-Republicans', crony-governmentist-Republicans and big-government-conservative-oxyMORONS spending millions of dollars in campaign money to stop the advancement of limited government principles after failing to elect their own candidates nationally in the last two Presidential contests, in one against a complete rookie and the other against a totally failed incumbent.

How about we debate the issues and contrast the candidates instead of smearing our own with lies, deceit, race baiting in the case of Mississippi, and ad hominem attacks?

Case in point, Pres. Obama won Florida in 2008 by 200,000 votes and in 2012 by 70,000. In 2010, Marco Rubio won Florida by a million votes, and not by sounding like a Democrat or promising to fund bad programs.